My favorite way to eliminate the often paralyzing fear of "ruining" "good" paper is to just paint on any and all junk mail that comes into my house. Higher end catalogs are great for this, they don't use slick, thin paper (and even that gets used in collage or as a desk cover for other projects) and they're already bound for you. Just add marks! Carry it with you. Scan the pages you like. Cut it up later for making other art. It's "just" junk mail, so there is literally no pressure. I have HUNDREDS of these type of things and I run across them all the time, forgotten, in some old backpack or purse or drawer and it's a treasure to look through them again, and add new marks, paints and words.
Tried some papercutting. I made a stencil then copied it and put over some collage. I need to work on my gluing technique and probably try out some different paper, but glad I kept the original stencil.
Maybe this is about consumerism, or exploitation of resources - who knows - I don't want to be too serious. I just want to have fun - and eat tonnes and tonnes of ice-cream!
Wanted to practice with some charcoal but couldn't resist collaging it up a bit! A great way to hide mistakes (or laziness!) Tui's are NZ's most successful native bird.
